Product Updates

Announcements: Changes to Diagnostic and Growth Reports

Teachers using the Renaissance Star Maths or Renaissance Star Reading Diagnostic and Growth Reports will notice some important changes in the information these reports provide.

Star Reading Diagnostic Reports will now include —

– The time taken to complete the assessment
– Identification along a Screening Continuum of a student’s position relating to the benchmark
– The Scaled Score and which Group the student is placed into
– The Reading Age
– The Norm Referenced Standardised Score
– The Student Growth Percentile
– Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
– If there are any Test Fidelity Issues (such as the assessment being taken in a very short time) teachers will be alerted in this section.

Star Maths Diagnostic Reports will now include —

– The time taken to complete the assessmen
– Identification along a Screening Continuum of a student’s position relating to the benchmark
– The Scaled Score and which Group the student is placed into
– The Norm Referenced Standardised Score
– The Student Growth Percentile
– If there are any Test Fidelity Issues (such as the assessment being taken in a very short time) teachers will be alerted in this section.

Star Reading Growth Reports will include —

– Dates the assessments were taken
– Both Scaled Scores and the change in these
– The Reading Ages and the change in these
– PRs and the changes in these
– The Norm Referenced Standardised Scores and any changes in these
– The Student Growth Percentile

Star Maths Growth Reports will include —

– Dates the assessments were taken
– Both Scaled Scores and the change in these
– PRs and the changes in these
– The Norm Referenced Standardised Scores and any changes in these
– The Student Growth Percentile

Accelerated Reader Quizzing on iOS Devices

Renaissance Accelerated Reader® is designed to be used on any device, iOS or other, that is 7 inches or larger. Educators and students can access Accelerated Reader from a browser on these devices by using the provided URL. We hope that the following answers will help answer some of the most frequently asked questions about using Accelerated Reader on your devices.

Previously we used the Accelerated Reader iPhone and iPad apps. Will those apps be updated?

No, in August 2017, Renaissance Learning announced that we would be discontinuing support for the previously available iPad and iPhone apps for Accelerated Reader. As of August 2018, the apps were removed from the iTunes store and are no longer available for download. If your students are still using the previously installed iOS apps, you should transition to using a supported browser on those same devices. Quizzing on the retired apps will not work after June 30, 2019.

We have iPads for students to use in our classroom. How can I make it easy for students to login to Accelerated Reader on this device?

To make logging on faster for students you may consider creating a bookmark for your Renaissance site on the iPad. Please refer to the browser’s Help files for the most up to date steps. At the time this document was created, the following steps were supported for Chrome and Firefox.

Creating Bookmarks in Chrome on the iPad:
1. Open the Chrome browser and browse to the page that you want to bookmark
2. Open the Chrome options menu and touch the star icon at the top of the menu.
3. Configure the bookmark settings, then tap the “Save” button

Creating Bookmarks in Firefox on the iPad:
1. Open Firefox and browse to the page that you want to bookmark
2. To bookmark a page, tap the menu button (either below the screen on some devices or at the top-right corner of the browser) and select the star.
3. Bookmark added will appear at the bottom of the screen.
4. To rename or edit your bookmark, tap Options in the message that appears when you bookmark the page.

Exciting new features for Accelerated Reader will be added for you and your students!

Students will be able to discover 2,000 engaging non-fiction articles (labelled Accelerated Reader 360) covering dozens of topics from history, science, technology and culture from their Renaissance Home Page (formerly known as Renaissance Place). After reading the article they will also be able to test their comprehension with an AR quiz for each article. Please note that quizzes on articles do not currently earn the student points, and are written in US English.

Students will see the “% of points target earned” metric on their progress page.

On the ‘My Completed Work’ tab (formerly the Bookshelf), students will be able to search for completed quizzes by title, quiz number or author.

Students will be able to search for books by Book Level, Interest Level or Points using the new advanced filters.

Teachers will be able to run the new ‘Targets Met’ Report to get a list of all students who have met their targets, making this important task quick and easy.

Teachers will be able to set a new ‘Passing Percent Correct’ preference to control what quiz scores count as passing.